The purpose of this study is to investigate how a group of students experience their learning when working in groups, and determine if they prefer to work individually or in groups. This study will also investigate what the students believe that they learn when working in groups. The study is based on these two questions: How and what do students perceive that they learn from working in groups? Do the students in my study prefer to work in groups or individually? The method I have used to retrieve information has been to interview four different students. The interviews were individual; I did so to get a deeper view of how students perceive their own learning in groups. I chose a selection of students, two girls and two boys ranging in the ages from 15 to 16 years old, these pupils were all attending the same school. Social Constructivism is the theoretical perspective that my essay is based on. The key concepts of my essay are based on the terms "the horizon of understanding" which come from the hermeneutic research tradition and life-world which is a central concept in the phenomenological research tradition. The results from this study show that students believe that the spoken interaction in groups is important. The students believe that their individual learning can be developed further with the help of oral interactions, an example given is when students embrace new ideas and thoughts by talking to each other in groups. Based on the results of the interviews, students feel that their individual learning is affected positively when working in groups. This study shows that when students are being asked if they prefer to work in groups or individually, the answer is evenly divided, but with a small majority favoring to work in groups. However, almost all students who participated in my study believe that working in group is almost all the time a fun method of working and studying.

This narrative inquiry examines the stories told by eight young New Zealanders who have experienced specific difficulties with learning. At the time of being interviewed, they were aged from 9-14 years and participating in regular school classes. For the purposes of the study, being a student was identified as a key occupational role and failing to achieve tasks associated with this role was viewed as failure to achieve role competency. The issue of learning difficulties has been extensively researched but rarely from the perspective of young people. A primary goal of the study was to obtain young people's perceptions of the experience of learning difficulties. This is consistent with international moves to obtain the views of young people through research. Narrative interviewing procedures were used and participants were invited to talk about the things they enjoyed doing and felt they are good at doing, as well as the things they had trouble doing. They proved to be capable informants and provided a rich range of narrative data. Interviews were audio taped, transcribed and interview transcripts were synthesised into a story format. Each participant had the opportunity to check their story and give their final consent to its use as data in this thesis. As part of the analytical process, core narratives were constructed to capture the essence of each participant's story, their unique narrative voice, relationship with others and fundamental message. These narratives are presented in full, introducing participants as characters in their own story and revealing the nature of the stories told. In addition, thematic narratives drawn from the stories have been collated into three key categories, which relate to self and learning efforts, relationship with the social world and being occupational. The narrative analysis found that learning difficulties occurred as a negative interruption in the progressive course of participants' story, with the potential to compromise their sense of identity and well-being. However, the study also found that when participants chose to characterise themselves in relation to occupations or roles in which they felt most successful, they were able to express a more positive and holistic identity than that of being "learning disabled". Furthermore, in the context of an occupational narrative that included their talents and abilities, learning difficulties were not necessarily the determining factor in how life was for them or where their lives might go. The implication of the study's findings relate to the importance for young people of not only experiencing competency in significant occupations and roles, but also being seen to be competent. This underpins a positive sense of identity and well-being, which is likely to link to their future. They need to understand for themselves and for those around them to understand, that it is possible to be intelligent yet have trouble with basic numeracy and literacy skills. Empathetic adults have a vital role to play in providing the information, opportunities and supportive context in which young people develop an understanding of their occupational competencies and become competent human beings. There is a place for further narrative research with young New Zealanders; there are many stories from other perspectives yet to be told. Ongoing research conducted through an occupational lens is needed to understand the way in which young people with learning difficulties develop, or fail to develop, an understanding of themselves as competent occupational beings and how this supports or constrains their transition through adolescence into adulthood.

This thesis is concerned with the development of tertiary students' experiences of learning as they progress through three years of undergraduate study in two different psychology programs. Previous research that is relevant to this topic has tended to focus either more narrowly on the development of epistemic beliefs or more broadly on the variation of learners' experiences of learning. Research on epistemic beliefs has tended to focus on the structural aspects (stages) of development and to ignore the content of thinking. In contrast, research on experiences of learning has concentrated upon the content of students' experiences, yet it can be criticised for the way in which it decontextualises students' experiences and for its limited attention to change and development. Moreover, despite evidence suggesting that learning comprises a complex of phenomena such as understanding, memorising and knowing, this line of research has tended to treat learning as a single phenomenon. In the thesis I draw on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, Gurwitsch's view of awareness, and much of the conceptual framework of the phenomenographic perspective to argue a case for a theoretical framework and consequential practices that are more plural and inclusive of learner's experiences of learning. The new approach refocuses the relationship between researcher, knower and known in terms of the knowing relation-one that involves a dynamic iterative interweaving of first and second order perspectives. Using this new approach, students' experiences are analysed to provide rich description and ontological explanation of both change and development over time. The approach allows the unity of the partlwholelpart relation of an individual's experience to be recognised. So the method is able to take account of the contextual relevancy of the individual whilst also focusing on the experiences of the group. The results show that rather than comprising a single phenomenon, learning is itself part of a multi-dimensional (depth, spatial and temporal dimensions), multi-phenomenal field. The phenomena of learning, understanding, memorising and knowledge are described in detail, and their individual internal relations are elaborated along with the internal relations between the phenomena. Four main groups of experiences of learning are described within this framework: reproductive experiences; relational experiences; constructive experiences; and transformative experiences. Each of these categories comprises several sub- categories. This fine-grained focus on individual students' data, and the use of the phenomenographic whadhow framework, allows the development of experiences to be traced and interpreted as a gradual morphing over time. The pattern of development suggests that each part of the learners' journey plays an important role in the growth of skill and competence in learning. Thus, it may be important that curricula account for variation not by focussing upon transformative experiences of learning, as is often the case, but by facilitating shifts through all of the experiences that learners may pass through.

The central concern of the thesis is to problematise the complexity of the relationship between student learning and the teaching-learning environment in medicine as experienced by students. The thesis argues that learning material presented to students offers only potential for learning. What students make of that potential is influenced by a number of different variables and as such this needs to be investigated empirically. High-quality learning is an important goal for all higher education and previous research together with the empirical findings presented in this thesis convey the importance for students to seek a holistic approach to learning. Such a learning approach encompasses not only learning of facts and theories but also includes exercising an ability to reflect and reason, to organise facts and theories into wholes, and to explore how they relate to each other. Most importantly, it involves the ability to understand the grounds on which facts and theories are chosen for specific purposes depending on context. The thesis explores these issues by drawing on findings from three studies of medical students’ experiences of learning and understanding and how students’ personal understandings of subject content in medicine come to the fore in their work on learning tasks. By applying a context-oriented methodological perspective on learning, focusing on what students actually do in a learning situation, the thesis enables an in-depth investigation of relationships between aspects of content, context and the individual. The results show that the learning environment in the medical programme to a large extent does not make sufficient room for students to express understanding of this dynamic character. In the thesis it is argued that to facilitate such an understanding it is necessary for both students and teachers to increase awareness of the context-dependency of subject content, facts and theories, and the different meanings content takes depending on context of use.

This narrative inquiry examines the stories told by eight young New Zealanders who have experienced specific difficulties with learning. At the time of being interviewed, they were aged from 9-14 years and participating in regular school classes. For the purposes of the study, being a student was identified as a key occupational role and failing to achieve tasks associated with this role was viewed as failure to achieve role competency. The issue of learning difficulties has been extensively researched but rarely from the perspective of young people. A primary goal of the study was to obtain young people's perceptions of the experience of learning difficulties. This is consistent with international moves to obtain the views of young people through research. Narrative interviewing procedures were used and participants were invited to talk about the things they enjoyed doing and felt they are good at doing, as well as the things they had trouble doing. They proved to be capable informants and provided a rich range of narrative data. Interviews were audio taped, transcribed and interview transcripts were synthesised into a story format. Each participant had the opportunity to check their story and give their final consent to its use as data in this thesis. As part of the analytical process, core narratives were constructed to capture the essence of each participant's story, their unique narrative voice, relationship with others and fundamental message. These narratives are presented in full, introducing participants as characters in their own story and revealing the nature of the stories told. In addition, thematic narratives drawn from the stories have been collated into three key categories, which relate to self and learning efforts, relationship with the social world and being occupational. The narrative analysis found that learning difficulties occurred as a negative interruption in the progressive course of participants' story, with the potential to compromise their sense of identity and well-being. However, the study also found that when participants chose to characterise themselves in relation to occupations or roles in which they felt most successful, they were able to express a more positive and holistic identity than that of being "learning disabled". Furthermore, in the context of an occupational narrative that included their talents and abilities, learning difficulties were not necessarily the determining factor in how life was for them or where their lives might go. The implication of the study's findings relate to the importance for young people of not only experiencing competency in significant occupations and roles, but also being seen to be competent. This underpins a positive sense of identity and well-being, which is likely to link to their future. They need to understand for themselves and for those around them to understand, that it is possible to be intelligent yet have trouble with basic numeracy and literacy skills. Empathetic adults have a vital role to play in providing the information, opportunities and supportive context in which young people develop an understanding of their occupational competencies and become competent human beings. There is a place for further narrative research with young New Zealanders; there are many stories from other perspectives yet to be told. Ongoing research conducted through an occupational lens is needed to understand the way in which young people with learning difficulties develop, or fail to develop, an understanding of themselves as competent occupational beings and how this supports or constrains their transition through adolescence into adulthood.

The aim of this study was to generate a substantive grounded theory to explain a variety of young people's experiences of football within and external to FA Charter Standard Clubs and Schools. A modified grounded theory methodology (Strauss and Corbin, 1998; Charmaz, 2000) was selected following an ethical commitment to 'listen to young people's voices'. This methodology was underpinned by critical realist ontological assumptions (Sayer, 2000) and reformulated according to Popperian epistemology (Popper, 1972; 1981). Ten mini-ethnographies were conducted in football clubs and schools in England over a period of 12 months. Data were generated through focussed group interviews with young people (aged 8-18), and participant observation captured in field notes. Over three increasingly deductive iterations (or 'vintages') of data collection and analysis, a substantive theory of socialisation processes in youth football was created. This abstract theory hypothesised that young people's experiences may be conceptualised as partially individualised responses to external influences, expressed as desires and concerns that may act reciprocally on the social context. More specific hypotheses (or models) were formulated and 'mapped over' the abstract theory. The relationship between stress, enjoyment and learning in youth football is explored in the first of these models, focussing specifically on the role of significant adults. Coach behaviour and its impact on the youth football environment is the subject of the second model, which describes an 'ideal type' football programme. Female experiences are the subject of the third section of the discussion which focuses on 'first contact' with football (particularly male domination in mixed football) and subsequent socialisation experiences. Here it is conjectured that the development of friendships and identity specific to football may increase the propensity to participate. The final model conceptualises socialisation processes for young players from black and minority ethnic communities. The problems of 'culture barriers' and institutional racism are explored before considering the role youth football might play in the wider 'integration debate'. Finally, some recommendations for policy change and for future research are offered. Here it is suggested that policy changes are monitored and evaluated with critical sociological studies focussing on young people's experiences of coaching and parenting and hegemonic power relations in female and multicultural football respectively.

No description available.

Mobile learning has significant potential to be very influential in further and higher education. In this research a new definition for Mobile Educational Mixed Reality Games (MEMRG) is proposed based on a mobile learning environment. A questionnaire and a quantifying scale are utilised to assist the game developers in designing a MEMRG. A 'Conversational Framework' is proposed as an appropriate psycho-pedagogical approach to teaching and learning for MEMRG. This methodology is based on the theme of a 'conversation' between different actors of the learning community with the objective of building the architectural framework for MEMRG. Various elements responsible for instructing and motivating learners in educational games are utilised in an instructional-motivational model. User interface design for the games incorporates an efficient navigation system that uses contextual information, and allows the players to move seamlessly between real and virtual worlds. The implementation of MEMRG using the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) platform iii is presented. The hardware and software specification for the MEMRG implementation and deployment are also discussed. MEMRG has produced improvements in the different cognitive processes of the learner, and also produced a deeper level of learning through enculturation, externalising ideas, and socialising. Learners' enjoyment, involvement, motivation, autonomy and metacognition skills have improved. This research will assist developers and teachers to gain an insight into learning paradigms which utilise mobile game environments that are formed by mixing real and virtual spaces, and provide them with a vision for effectively incorporating these games into formal and informal classroom sessions.

The mechanism of how physical education teacher education (PETE) students learn to teach physical education (PE) has been considered as a missing link in a comprehensive curriculum of PETE research. Previous studies found that the PETE students’ acculturation phase has a big impact on the students’ beliefs towards teaching PE as it is referred to as Occupational Socialization Theory (OST). The purpose of this study was to explore how PETE students learn to teach PE based on their experiences being taught PE and coached in a sport and their reflections on their emerging practices whilst taking a course EPHE 452 – Strategies for teaching games, a culminating course in their physical and health education teachable area. The study used two qualitative research methods, autoethnography and participant observation ethnography, within a case study design methodology. Data collection included the case studies’ interviews of three PETE students and the EPHE 452 course observation throughout COVID-19 pandemic in Spring semester in 2021. The findings showed that PETE students carried beliefs from their acculturation phase to their professional phase, while the teacher education program has a positive impact on the PETE students’ beliefs towards teaching PE. Four organizing course themes with sub-themes emerged; insights on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the course becoming a mediating theme. Several effective methods were used to develop PETE students’ abilities to teach PE, such as the online resources, group discussions, the practicum experience and the reading of articles. The COVID-19 pandemic created opportunities and challenges among PETE students who took EPHE 452 course in Spring Semester in 2021 that have led to a rethinking and redevelopment of the EPHE 452 course. / Graduate